I've long had the view that it was the University of British Columbia [UBC] that you should look to in order to see the intersection of higher education and sustainability at its best; that is, for an integration across research, teaching and estates, to put it in conventional terms. \u00a0Having listened to John Robinson, UBC's vice provost for sustainability, and its internal and external champion, I'm now not so sure. \u00a0This may sound odd given UBC's amazing development in terms of sustainability and its campus, which looks world-leading and a model to emulate, even to a serially jaundiced eye.<\/p>\n
No, it's not that, and Robinson gave chapter and verse on what UBC has done, and is doing, with their vision to 2050. \u00a0Rather, it's what he said about teaching and learning that gives pause for thought. \u00a0Actually, he didn't say all that much, devoting some 6 hurried minutes out of a rather compelling 50 minute talk to this \u2013 odd in itself, given that this was an engineering education conference.<\/p>\n
But what he did say did not present a picture of an academic community eager to focus on sustainability, nor of an academic leadership all that keen on suggesting they do that. \u00a0It all looked rather neglected: a B movie alongside that Hollywood blockbuster of a campus. \u00a0Whilst there are now some 480 sustainability-related courses (I'm not sure what this means), and voluntary pathways on sustainability learning (or that), none of it looked exceptional. \u00a0Of course, Robinson hasn't an academic role, so someone else might have painted a more positive picture of teaching and learning than his sketch of the academic as a bit of a problem having to be pushed by students, and nudged (pulled<\/em> would be going too far) ever so very gingerly by the institution.<\/p>\n Well, I guess I'll have to look elsewhere for integrated excellence. \u00a0A pity; I was thinking of visiting. \u00a0Maybe Gloucestershire ...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I've long had the view that it was the University of British Columbia [UBC] that you should look to in order to see the intersection of higher education and sustainability at its best; that is, for an integration across research,...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":237,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-comment","category-news-and-updates","category-talks-and-presentations"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/237"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4700\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/edswahs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}